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Goodyear Says New USWA Contract Allows for Kelly-Springfield Plant Expansion

8 May 1997

Union Approval Could Boost Fayetteville Plant

    FAYETTEVILLE, N.C., May 8 -- The world's biggest tire plant
just got bigger.
    The new contract approved by United Steelworkers on Thursday provides the
flexibility for the Kelly-Springfield facility here to go to a seven-day
continuous schedule, which could eventually increase employment by more than
300 and boost production by about 60,000 tires per week.
    Goodyear operates three Kelly-Springfield plants as a wholly
owned subsidiary.
    The Fayetteville tire plant currently produces more than 60,000 radial
passenger and radial light truck tires every day, the largest daily production
by a single plant in the world.
    Since the Fayetteville plant produced its first tire (a bias passenger
tire) in December 1969, the Kelly facility has made more than 300 million
tires.  The plant's 3,000 employees celebrated that milestone on
July 28, 1996.
    Production at the plant evolved as demand for radial passenger tires
increased.  From the original modest daily production run of 12,500 tires per
day in a 500,000-square-foot facility, the plant increased capacity to 60,000-
plus tires in a facility that has more than two million square feet under
roof.
    Two million square feet, about 46 acres, would accommodate about 77
football fields.
    Goodyear has invested about $50 million since 1992 in the Fayetteville
plant.

SOURCE  Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company